𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 · 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐈

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭

~"remember who you love."~

Tomorrow I will be fighting for my life.

That's all I think to myself as hours pass and I can't fall asleep, even though I know how important it is to be rested. Sometime around midnight, my door opens and Finnick's head pops in, checking to make sure I'm not asleep before coming in and sitting down next to me.

"How's your head?" He asks me.

"Fine. It stopped hurting." I answer, being mostly truthful. The cut on my brow stopped bleeding after about an hour or so. It wasn't too deep. I still have a little headache from my head getting smashed into the elevator's crystal walls, but it's mostly fine.

"You should try and get some sleep," Finnick informs me.

"I've been trying to," I reply.

Finnick puts an arm around my shoulder. "I know."

"How did you do it?" I ask. I'm not talking about sleep anymore, and he knows.

He's quiet a moment before answering. "I thought of everyone I'd come back home to. Whenever you think of giving up, make a list of everyone you care about in your head. A lot of times we can't do it for ourselves, but we can do it for others.

I think this over before responding. "You sound like Mags. When'd you get so wise?"

"Seven years ago," Finnick answers so quietly I almost don't catch it. "And things'll be different get out of this, Cal. There'll be days where you wish you had never won. And you'll probably think it's not work winning at some point in the games." He pauses. "I guess what I'm trying to say is...remember who you love."

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We have to get up very early to get flown out to the arena. Lino walks down with me to the roof after I say goodbye to Finnick, who got up early to say goodbye.

Once we're both onboard, they inject a tracker into my arm. Then, an Avox girl leads us down to a room inside the hovercraft where breakfast has been laid out. I try to eat as much as I can. You can never be sure you'll eat when you're in the arena.

Lino makes some conversation with me, and then just starts talking about himself. This is his 10th year as a stylist, and he started when he was 24. He started as District Nine's stylist, which he says was very hard to design costumes for. They're the grain district, so that's understandable.

The ride lasts about an hour before we land. We go down to what's called the Launch Room, where I'll get ready. I take a shower and brush my teeth before getting dressed in this year's tribute outfit. It's a pair of forest green pants with a dark brown, short sleeve shirt. A belt, too. The shirt and pants have a weird feeling to the material that I figure out just as Lino tells me.

"They're waterproof," He tells me, then gives me the shoes and socks to put on, too. "So are the socks and shoes."

Then he gives me Colven's rope bracelet. The prep team took it from me when I first got to the Remake Center, assuring me that I'd get it back.

"Thank you," I say.

Lino braids my hair back in a fishtail braid. District pride who?

We sit on the couch, not talking, until a voice comes over a speaker saying that it's time to prepare to launch.

"Your brother told me to tell you that all you need to do is look at your bracelet and start there," Lino tells me, not bothering to ask for an explanation. He doesn't need one, anyway. I understand.

My list can start with Colven. Who am I going to come back to? Colven and Jake, for starters. My brothers. Jaiden. And I'm going to fight for my father,

A glass cylinder lowers over me, locking me in, but I feel a strange sense of resolve as the metal plate underneath me begins to rise.

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hey loves!

short chapter! sorry!

lemme know whatcha think>>>

xx

maddie